PM Orbán: Hungary has a 6-8-week advantage in vaccinations in the EU – UPDATED

Vaccination is the only way to get protection against the coronavirus and those who don’t get vaccinated can potentially become infected, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday.

Hungary has a six to eight-week advantage in terms of vaccinations compared to all other European Union countries “because we acquired vaccines earlier and started vaccination sooner”, Orbán told public radio Kossuth.

“We are also among the first ones to relaunch life,”

he added.

Orbán said he was still very concerned about the three million Hungarians who refused to get vaccinated. “The virus will find those who are not vaccinated, which means we have potentially three million infections,” he added. The prime minister

asked everyone to register and get vaccinated.

• These are the ways to get an immunity certificate in Hungary

Orbán said that, in line with current knowledge, vaccinated persons are protected against all variants of the virus discovered so far and there is no potential variant on the horizon that existing vaccinations are not good for. Citing the example of the UK where the number of infections is on the increase despite the high rate of vaccinations, the prime minister asked everyone to accept that “vaccination is the only way to get protection against the coronavirus”.

Commenting on reports claiming that Hungary’s law against pedophiles approved this Tuesday was homophobe, Orban said first of all, it would be worth for gay people to read the text of the law. They will realise that it does not apply to those above 18, he said, adding that the law was dedicated to the “protection of our children”.

The starting point of the law is that the sexual education of children is exclusively the job of parents and no institution can take that right away, Orbán said.

The law states that parents must be guaranteed the right to decide on the sexual education of their children and very clear limits must be set for sexual education at school, he said. Children must be protected from access to information on any platform that would be contrary to the educational ideas of parents, he added.

In response to a question, Orbán said he did not expect Brussels to find any aspect of the law that could justify launching an infringement procedure in this matter.

Commenting on a European Union initiative to introduce a minimum corporate tax rate, he said “it is in the national interest of Hungary not to accept externally imposed tax regulations”. Orban said the “starting point” for the country’s economic success was a tax system that makes Hungary competitive.